Echoes of Dreamtime
by Arostine
Summary: When Shizuka offered to house-sit for Ryou, she expected a quiet month alone. She didn't expect an angry ghost. She didn't expect to change the past. And she certainly didn't expect to fall in love. Shizuka x Amane. Set 10 years post-canon.
1. Arrive

**Title: **Echoes of Dreamtime  
**Disclaimer: **I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh and I'm not making any money off of this.  
**Summary: **When Shizuka offered to house-sit for Ryou, she expected a quiet month alone, a few chores, and time to get some writing in. She didn't expect an angry ghost. She didn't expect to change the past. And she certainly didn't expect to fall in love. Shizuka x Amane. Set 10 years post-canon.  
**Rating: **T

**Notes for Chapter 1: **

(1): Set 10 years post-canon. Shizuka and Amane are 22; Ryou and Otogi are 26.

**(2): ****NAMES THAT MIGHT CONFUSE YOU****:**  
Katsuya **Jounouchi**/Joey Wheeler is called **Katsuya**. (Because Shizuka wouldn't call her brother by his last name, and this is told in 3rd person limited omniscient from her perspective.)  
**Ryou** Bakura is called **Bakura** (Shizuka doesn't know him well enough to call him by his first name)

(3): Information about the Australian Aboriginal concept of Dreamtime was taken from Wikipedia.

(4): Many many thanks to safa'at keruth for beta-ing this and giving me the confidence to post it.

(5): This fic is a prize for Defenestration of the Mind, because her Protectshipping fic won Round 3 of the YuGiOh Fanfiction Contest. It is also dedicated to her, just because she's awesome. =)

==o==

**Chapter 1: Arrive**

==o==

_Let me tell you a story. _

_It begins with a house._

_And…_

…_Sorry, I'm a bit out of practice. And, beyond the house, it's a difficult story to tell. In a way, I suppose, there are two stories._

_Let's begin with the house, then._

_There's this house in a small prefecture in Japan. It's a typical suburban house, nothing very fancy – two stories, a garage, a mailbox labeled 'Bakura.' It's the kind of house __you__ live in. _

_Now, in front of this house, there's a yard and a garden and a long driveway that leads out onto a residential street. And here's where it gets confusing. Try to keep up. _

_The two stories split on that street. _

_In the first story, a shiny new car drives down that residential street, away from the house. The car carries a boy and his little sister, both white-haired, both adorable._

_The shiny new car exits onto the highway. There's a shriek of brakes and a crunch of metal, and suddenly, the little girl is gone. Only the brother returns to the house, and he doesn't stay for long. _

_I know how that story ends. But that story isn't true anymore._

_The second story is a backwards parallel of the first, one that takes place almost thirteen years later. A broken-down, rusty old car clunks down that residential street, toward the house. The car carries a man and a woman, who also happen to be brother and sister. The woman has auburn hair, shy eyes and too many books in her suitcase. And in the house, there's someone waiting for her. _

_And that much is true; that much is __always__ true, although the details change with the telling. As does the ending. _

_Let me tell you the second story. It's more interesting._

==o==

"Here we are."

Jounouchi Katsuya's voice roused his sister, who had been sleeping deeply in the backseat of his rusty old Toyota. She blinked blearily and started to put her head back down against the window.

"Nope," her brother said gently, "it's time to rise and shine, Shizuka. We're about a block away from Bakura's place. D'you want me to wait a couple minutes before I pull into the driveway so you can wake up a little?"

Shizuka rubbed her eyes and managed a sleepy, "Sure, that'd be great." She yawned. "Y'know, I really appreciate you driving me all the way here, Katsuya."

Katsuya smiled. "Eh, it's nothing. I don't like that you always have to take the bus with the creeps. Looking out for you's my job, remember?"

"Mmm…" Shizuka mumbled, still vaguely considering going back to sleep. Her brother always made a big deal out of the fact that her eyes weren't good enough for her to get a driver's license. She didn't see what the problem was. Her contacts corrected her vision enough that she could lead a completely normal life, minus driving. That was _nothing_, considering that 10 years ago she'd almost gone blind. But then, Katsuya had protected her from that, too.

"Yeah," Shizuka said with a smile. "I'm still grateful, though." She stretched, cracked her neck, and suppressed another yawn. "Still sleepy too."

Katsuya shrugged. "Then we'll park here for a couple minutes. No big deal. We wouldn't want Bakura to think his soon-to-be house-sitter was gonna be sleeping on the job, now would we?" He craned his neck over his shoulder and shot her a wicked grin. "I guess spring term at college really took a lot out of you."

_That jerk._ Shizuka was now fully awake, a familiar surge of adrenaline running through her veins. Katsuya had totally done that on purpose. He knew that mentioning college, especially spring term, would send her blood pressure skyrocketing these days.

She really _should _have graduated at the end of spring term, capped and gowned, a newly-named Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology. Shizuka had completed all of the coursework for her degree, but the anthropology department had left one final hoop for its students to jump through. To graduate, each student had to write a 75- to 100-page thesis on a topic of her choice. The length requirement alone was staggering, and it had sent many a prospective anthropology student screaming off into a psychology major.

To make matters worse, at the beginning of spring term, Shizuka came down with a titanic case of writer's block. It wasn't that she didn't want to write her thesis; she just _couldn't _for some reason. She must've spent at least a hundred hours _trying_ to write it, sitting in front of a blank screen, typing a sentence and deleting it. The school year ended, and Shizuka's thesis hadn't even begun.

After much pleading on Shizuka's part, the department had given her permission to delay her graduation and to write her thesis over the summer. But the deadline was the first day of fall term, exactly one month away. If she didn't have her thesis done by then, she was Not Going To Graduate. The very thought made her sick to her stomach.

Katsuya noticed the pained look on his sister's face and stopped his teasing immediately. "Oh, don't worry about it, Shizuka, I'm sure you'll finish. I mean, you've got practically the whole library shoved into your suitcase. By the time the summer's over, you'll know everything there is to know about Teatime."

"Dreamtime," Shizuka corrected (and Katsuya knew perfectly well what her topic was called, she grumbled inwardly, he just thought it was cute to act stupid). "Remember, I told you about it. It's part of the mythology of the aboriginal people of Australia. It's sort of both past and present; it's the time when the Spirit Beings first formed the universe, but it's still ongoing too. It's sort of like a spirit world, but instead it's a spirit time, and…"

Shizuka stopped when she noticed that her brother had stopped looking at her and was instead watching a rabbit hop across the street. "Katsuya, are you even listening?

Katsuya smirked again, still staring out the window. "Mmm, your mouth is moving, but your words are too complex for my simple mind to comprehend. All I hear is 'blah blah blah blah…'"

Shizuka shot him her very best annoyed-little-sister glare.

Katsuya coughed uncomfortably and continued. "Anyway, I don't know what you're worried about. You're pretty much bound to get it done. I mean, it's not like you're going to have many distractions. All alone in that house, for a whole month…"

His face grew worried; Shizuka knew he still didn't like the idea of her being alone for so long.

"You sure you don't want me to swing by once in a while?"

"Katsuya, the house is _two hours_ away from Domino; you can't just _swing by_. Anyway, it's just house-sitting. I'll feed the cat and water the garden, and then I'll work on my paper for the rest of the day. Not exactly a hazardous job."

But the worried look on Katsuya's face didn't diminish, so Shizuka pressed on.

"And I'll be _fine_, I'm not a little girl anymore."

Katsuya looked like he didn't quite believe her. "You," he said sternly, "will always be my baby sister. Even when you're a hundred and twenty. I'll still be worrying about you and driving you around and making fun of your smarty-pants anthropology talk."

Shizuka sighed exasperatedly, but couldn't suppress a smile. "I love you too, stupid. C'mon, I'm awake now. Let's go say hi to Bakura."

==o==

The Bakura who greeted them at the door was an older, healthier, and altogether happier-looking version of the boy Shizuka had known ten years ago. She supposed that ridding oneself of demonic possession would do that. He wore his long white hair tied back in an untidy ponytail, and a few loose strands fell around his face when he bowed to them.

Bakura smiled at her kindly. "Thank you so much for offering to house-sit for me, Kawai-san. I'm so glad to have someone I can trust minding my old family home."

Shizuka shook her head. "It's my pleasure. I should be thanking you for the opportunity to stay in such a beautiful house."

Bakura laughed politely, formally. This was a bit awkward, Shizuka reflected. They really didn't know each other all that well. She had only offered to house-sit because Katsuya had heard he was going on vacation, and she needed a quiet place to write her thesis, preferably one that was far, far away from the distractions of home.

And then, suddenly, the awkwardness was broken and there was excited yelling all around her.

"Otogi!"

"Jounouchi!"

Bakura jumped about ten feet in the air and whirled around, which landed him face to face with his boyfriend, Otogi Ryuji. At the sight of his face, Bakura calmed down immediately.

"Oh," he breathed. "I didn't hear you come up behind me."

Otogi gave him one of his signature dashing smirks and then turned it towards Shizuka. "And miss an opportunity to gaze upon the beautiful Kawai Shizuka? Pft, not a chance."

It was amazing. Otogi could be standing in front of his boyfriend _and_ Shizuka's brother, and he'd _still_ try to flirt with her. She was starting to wonder if it was a reflex.

On cue, her brother's voice immediately sounded from behind her. "Try anything and die, Otogi."

Shizuka did notice, however, that the anger that had once infused that statement had been replaced by a certain amount of amusement.

Otogi wrapped his arms around Bakura from behind in a sort of backwards hug. "I'm just teasing," he said. "I wouldn't trade Ryou here for anyone, even the lovely Shizuka-chan."

Katsuya nodded at him a bit stiffly and then asked, with his usual bluntness, "So, are you two living together now?"

It was Bakura who answered this time. "Yes, we are. It is a _family_ home after all. I moved back here because, for the first time, I had someone to share it with."

There was nothing but happiness and pride in Bakura's voice, but Shizuka couldn't help but feel a twinge of sadness for him. After all, according to what she'd gradually picked up from her brother and his friends, part of the reason that Bakura had moved out of his family home was that he no longer had anything that could be called a family. His mother and little sister had died in that horrible car crash, and his father had effectively abandoned him for archaeological trips to Egypt. He'd been all alone.

Of course, Katsuya was quick to warn her, the other part of the reason that Bakura had moved out was that he'd had an evil spirit possessing him and putting people into comas. Still, that was just another reason to pity him. He'd had so many things taken away from him over the course of his lifetime, and she wished that somehow, impossibly, she could give some of them back.

But despite all that, Bakura was still standing, still smiling, if a little vacantly at the moment. Otogi poked him in the shoulder.

"Aren't you going to invite them in?"

Bakura smacked his head. "Of course! How rude of me. We've got quite a bit of time before our flight leaves; let us show you around." He beckoned them inside.

And with that, Shizuka crossed the threshold between the outside world and the inside world. In a strange way, it was the last time she'd ever do so.

==o==


	2. Alone

**Chapter 2: Alone**

==o==

**Notes : **

(1): _Marukaite Chikyuu_ is the theme song to Axis Powers Hetalia. Which I also don't own. But it's a super-peppy song that would be good to sing in an eerily quiet house.

==o==

Bakura's house contained three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a tortoiseshell cat named Tama, and not much else.

"Father never spent much time here," Bakura explained, "and we just moved in a few months ago, so we haven't had time to fill it up yet. You can feel free to spread out and make yourself at home, though. I'm pretty sure Father has online subscriptions to several anthropology journals, so you can make use of those if you need. He won't notice."

Shizuka noted, with some satisfaction, that Bakura's politeness didn't seem to extend to his father. In the master bedroom that he and Otogi now shared, she'd noticed a box full of artifacts and quite a few empty display placards on the wall. She hadn't commented.

Bakura led the group to the kitchen. "Help yourself to whatever's in the refrigerator," he said. "Don't be shy; it'll all be expired by the time we get back anyway."

"The pantry too," Otogi said. "I have quite an impressive collection of ramen in there, but I'm pretty sure I'll need to go low-carb for a while after a month-long trip to France. Best to remove the temptation." He shot her another debonair smile.

Oh, Otogi. He could charm the legs off a chair. She remembered how surprised she'd been when he'd first taken an interest in her, how flattered she'd felt when he'd smiled at her and flirted with her and tried to hold her hand. But oddly, that was all she'd felt. Charmed and flattered and surprised.

In a way, she supposed, Otogi's crush on her was the first step in her figuring out that she wasn't really interested in men. Over the next ten years, she'd mostly come to terms with the whole 'probably-being-a-lesbian thing' (as she called it in her head), but she hadn't told anyone yet. It wasn't that she thought her family would mind. (Well, her dad might, but she didn't care much for him anyway.) She just didn't think there was much point in bringing it up until she actually had a girlfriend.

The thesis wasn't the only thing that Shizuka was procrastinating.

At that thought, Shizuka realized she'd been staring at Otogi for rather a long time, and that people might start to get the wrong idea. Time to change the subject.

"Uh, Bakura-san…" she began. "Didn't you say there were three bedrooms in the house? I'd very much like to see the third."

Bakura suddenly looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Um, well, yes. But the third is a mess, all packed full of boxes from when we were moving in; I don't think there would be much room for you in there. At all. Um. You'll probably want to sleep in my old room; we haven't been using it for anything so it's nice and empty." He looked at her hopefully, pleadingly.

Shizuka decided not to press the matter. After all, Bakura would be leaving soon.

==o==

An hour later, Bakura and Otogi finally stopped chatting with Shizuka and Katsuya and left to catch their flight. A few minutes after that, Katsuya gave his sister a hug goodbye, told her to take care of herself and not to talk to strangers, ducked when she tried to smack him upside the head, and left as well.

She locked the door behind him and watched out the window as her brother's old Toyota backed out of the driveway and clunked away down the street. As she squinted into the mid-afternoon sunlight, the sounds from the car grew softer and softer until they finally faded away into the distance.

Shizuka was alone.

It was strange how the house seemed to change now that it was empty. Where just a few minutes before there had been Bakura's quiet voice, Otogi's snickers, and Katsuya's raucous laughter, now there was just…nothing.

Nothing but Shizuka and an empty house and the quiet.

This was a house where dead people had lived, Shizuka reflected morbidly. Bakura's mother and little sister. They'd walked these floors and eaten at these tables and left through that door before the horrible car accident that had taken both their lives.

It wasn't that she hadn't known before. She'd known the fates of the house's previous tenants and it hadn't really bothered her. It wasn't like car accidents were contagious.

It was just that…now it was quiet. And the quiet made things clearer. The absence of noise made other absences more apparent. Like the absence of a little girl's laugh.

God, it was so quiet.

A sort of…resonant silence.

Shizuka realized she'd forgotten to pack her iPod. _Crap_.

Well, that was one less thing that could distract her from her thesis. Yes. She'd unpack her things and then get to work immediately. She marched resolutely across the floor towards her suitcase.

_Creeeakkk…_

Shizuka jumped in surprise. She landed with a thump.

And a _creak. _

Oh. Well that was stupid. She raised her foot and lowered it again softly.

_Creak._

Shizuka mentally berated herself. It was just the floorboard. But…had it made that noise when Bakura had taken the group on their tour around the house?

Of…of course it had. She just hadn't heard it because they'd been talking and she hadn't been paying attention. God, she couldn't act like this the whole month, cringing at nothing, jumping at shadows.

It was just that the so…so _empty_. Noiseless.

_Lifeless_.

OK, this was just getting ridiculous. If she thought it was too quiet, she could darn well _hum _her way through the month. Or sing, even. It wasn't like there was anyone around to hear her.

Shizuka started a rousing chorus of _Marukaite Chikyuu_ and hauled her suitcase up the stairs and into Bakura's old bedroom. By the time she had finished hanging up her clothes and putting her library books into the bookshelf, she was starting to get really sick of the song. She stopped singing.

_Scratch…scratchscratch…scratchscratchscratch…_

_Claw-murderer-horrible-death-serial-killer-hook-hand-demon-ghost_-SHUT UP BRAIN.

Shizuka steadied herself. She was going to walk into the hallway. She was going to see what was making that scratching noise. And she was going to stop letting her imagination get the best of her.

She stepped out of Bakura's bedroom and immediately sighed with relief. At the other end of the hallway, the cat, Tama, was scratching at a door.

Shizuka told herself that all future weird noises would be attributed to the cat, and no more silliness would be had.

But suddenly, a much more pressing matter made its way to the front of her brain. That cat wasn't just scratching _at_ the door, it was actually _scratching _the door. Long, pale claw-marks appeared where the varnish had been scratched away, and more were being added by the second.

Great. She'd been house-sitting for all of an hour and already there was property damage.

She ran to the door and started to scold the cat in her most authoritative voice. "No! Bad Tama! Naughty kitty!"

Tama gave one final scratch down the door, and Shizuka cringed as she saw little wood splinters flying off into the hallway. Her work done, Tama stopped her scratching, shot Shizuka a look that clearly said 'Bitch, please,' and sauntered away insolently, flicking her tail behind her.

Shizuka sighed and bent down to survey the damage. It was as bad as she'd feared: the bottom third of the door was covered in fresh scratch marks. She supposed she'd have take the bus to the hardware store in the next couple of days and see what they had that could fill in the scratches. But it was no use despairing. She was sure that she could make this bedroom door look like the others.

This…bedroom…

Shizuka did a quick room count. There were five doors on the second floor. At one end of the hall was Bakura's old room, the one he'd asked her to sleep in. Next door was the bathroom, and next to that, the linen closet. Then there was the master bedroom, and then…

Then there was the third bedroom. _This_ was the third bedroom.

The one Bakura had ever-so specifically, ever-so cryptically, ever-so _enticingly_ asked her not to go into.

Well, forget _that. _

Shizuka popped up as if on springs and immediately reached for the doorknob.

It didn't budge. She rattled it a little. Nope, it was definitely locked. Darn. Oh well, it looked like she wouldn't be doing any secret-bedroom-exploring today. Having run out of things to do to procrastinate, Shizuka realized she was going to have to start working on her thesis.

It wasn't until she had gone back downstairs, turned on her laptop, opened a new document, and started her usual staring contest with a blank screen that Shizuka realized something important.

There wasn't a keyhole on the outside of that doorknob. The room was locked from the _inside_.

She wondered how Bakura had managed that.

==o==

_Dreamtime is a common term within the animist creation narrative of the indigenous Australians. It may be understood as a 'timeless time' of formative creation and perpetual creating. It was the time in which the universe was created, but simultaneously, it is a time that exists eternally. _

Shizuka sighed. She'd been staring at that paragraph in one of her library books for at least fifteen minutes, and she still couldn't figure out how to turn it into a coherent topic sentence for her thesis. To be totally honest, part of the problem was that Shizuka didn't totally understand the idea of Dreamtime herself. She'd committed to the topic months ago, back when it was an exciting view of non-linear time and immortality, totally foreign to her understanding of the world. But now…now what had been fascinating and unknown was just confusing and tiresome. And she'd probably forgotten much of what she'd learned about Dreamtime during spring term. Some re-reading was definitely in order. Yes, before she started to write, she'd certainly have to re-read at least two of her library books, maybe three…

The lights flickered.

Well, that was odd. Was there something wrong with the wiring?

Shizuka looked out the window and nearly fell out of her chair in surprise. Where there had been bright sun just an hour before, it was now raining heavily, and she could just barely make out the sound of thunder in the distance. Had she really been so immersed in her reading that she hadn't noticed such a dramatic change in the weather? She hadn't felt more focused than usual…

_CRASH_.

A giant rumble of thunder shook the house right down to its floorboards. A second later, there was a blinding flash of lighting, immediately followed by a sad electrical noise as the power went out.

She was blind.

Shizuka's day vision was poor, but it was practically 20/20 compared to her night vision. In the dark, she could literally see _nothing_. Nothing but blackness, total and absolute.

A prickle of fear ran down Shizuka's spine. She didn't know what to do. The safe thing would be to just curl up here and wait for the power to come back on, but that could be hours, maybe even as much as a day. And she'd still have to eat and go to the bathroom and stuff…that would never work.

Not to mention she'd be the helpless little blind girl again, curled up in the dark, the object of pity and charity. She _never_ wanted to feel like that again.

No. She wouldn't just sit idly by until someone on the outside turned the power back on for her. She would get up and _do_ something, damn it. She could feel her way around the walls for a closet; if she found one of those, maybe she'd be able to get to a flashlight.

She took a few hesitant steps forward, and then…

_MROW!-crash-clatter-thud-HISS…_

Shizuka landed on the floor in an undignified heap. Ouch. If the angry feline noises and the scratch on her leg were any evidence, she'd just tripped over the cat. She took stock of her body. No major injuries, although the cat scratch smarted a bit and her palms were a little sore from where she'd caught herself. Still, she hadn't hit her head or anything. She just had to stand up and try again.

She tried to push herself to her feet.

And failed.

Wait, what? Shizuka tried again.

Nothing happened.

It wasn't that she wasn't strong enough to push herself to her feet. It wasn't even that her legs weren't steady enough to hold her. _Nothing happened_. Not a single muscle contracted, not a single limb budged. She was paralyzed.

Paralyzed and blind.

Shizuka started to panic. And not the stressed-out 'What if?' panic she was accustomed to from school, either; this was pure, sharp wordless panic. The panic of being trapped here, paralyzed on the floor of this strange house, forever, unable to cry for help, unable to move, unable to see.

_Blind panic._

But it was strange, because even as her mind whirled, her body remained unchanged. Her heart didn't speed up, her breathing didn't quicken, she didn't even sweat. She just remained there, frozen on her hands and knees, staring down at the floorboards of the strange Bakura home. She couldn't even hear the thunder anymore. There was just motionlessness, blindness and silence.

And then suddenly, there wasn't. Sound and motion and _vision_.

She could see. It was still dark in the house, but all of a sudden she could see. Not just shadows and outlines, but _detail . _Here a chair, there the sofa—it was incredible. And just as Shizuka scratched the surface on _that _realization, she felt her body move as if pulled up on strings. She was rising, rising…She was apparently standing up, but the motion felt just as beyond her control as her original paralysis.

It was as if she was wearing someone else's body. Seeing through someone else's eyes.

And when Shizuka heard a voice coming from behind her, she would have screamed if she could have moved at all.

"Amane," said a woman's gentle voice, "are you alright? I heard a crash."

When Shizuka felt her own vocal cords start to vibrate and her own mouth begin to move, she was so surprised that at first she didn't listen to what she was saying.

"…just tripped over the cat. I couldn't see her in the dark."

Shizuka turned. No, that wasn't quite accurate. The body she inhabited turned, taking her with it.

Standing in front of her was a tall, thin woman with white hair and concerned brown eyes. Bakura's eyes, Shizuka realized.

"I was just going to get some flashlights," the woman said. "We have no way of knowing how long the power's going to be out. Are you sure you're alright?"

Shizuka felt herself nod. "Yes, Mom," the voice-from-her-mouth said. "You worry too much."

But the moment her mouth stopped speaking, Shizuka immediately felt her surprise replaced with rising panic. This had gone on too long. She'd lost track of how long it had been since she'd been in control of her own body. Had it been a minute? Five minutes? Would she ever get it back? The fear in her gut multiplied until…

She felt her body start to sit itself back down onto the sofa, when suddenly, it collapsed. She fell backwards against the sofa…but no, it wasn't a sofa anymore, it was a hard, like a desk chair…Her head rocked back at the fall and smacked against the backboard. She closed her eyes at the impact.

She had _willed _her eyes closed at the impact. She was back under her own control.

And she held her eyes closed. She squeezed them closed with all her might, as if in controlling that simple action, she could undo the terrifying minutes of lack of control, of paralysis. And she hoped, more fervently than she had ever hoped before, that when she opened them, everything would be back to normal.

She opened her eyes.

And it was.

She was sitting in her desk chair again, still in front of her laptop. The window outside showed a bright sunny day; all remnants of the thunderstorm were gone.

Shizuka wiggled her fingers. She could move again.

She immediately started to cry out of sheer relief, collapsed over onto the tabletop that hadn't been there just a few moments before. She let the sobs rack through her body, unashamed and unrestrained.

After all, she was alone.

==o==


	3. Awake

**Chapter 3: Awake**

==o==

Names were important.

From her brother's stories of Atem, Shizuka had learned that by erasing a person's name, one could effectively erase his existence, his memory. He could be deleted from history.

But Shizuka had known that names were important even before her brother had told her. Whether she was labeled as 'blind' or 'visually impaired' made all the difference in how other people looked at her. And even now, the fact that she called herself a lesbian in her head but not out loud made all the difference in how she looked at herself.

In the Dreamtime, the First Peoples had named the universe as they'd created it.

Yes, names were important, and that was why she was choosing to call the incident downstairs 'the nightmare.'

Had it been a nightmare? She didn't know. In a way, she _couldn't _know. She'd spent too long in a world of ancient ghosts in golden artifacts, of souls in machines and of monsters in cards. She'd lived in that world too long to believe that what had happened to her—seeing the world through a different pair of eyes, constant in place but not in time—was impossible.

But regular, garden-variety nightmares still existed, and she knew that. Sometimes seemingly supernatural occurrences had perfectly natural explanations.

The important thing was that she _wanted _it to have been a nightmare. And if she called it a nightmare for long enough, maybe it would become one.

After all, time-slip or no time-slip, Shizuka still had to finish her thesis.

Or even begin it.

In the week following 'the nightmare,' she'd tried to distract herself by throwing herself into her work. She fixed the scratches on the door, fed the cat, picked up the mail, and even found some time to work on her thesis.

Or, more accurately, stare blankly at the empty document that was supposed to be her thesis and try not to fall asleep.

And therein lay the problem of half-believing it had been a nightmare and half-believing it had really happened: somehow, she'd translated the fear of the paralysis, the loss of control, and the apparitions into a fear of _sleep_. Shizuka had slept fitfully every night following the nightmare, rarely dozing for more than an hour consecutively. The insomnia was starting to get to her.

She'd considered calling Katsuya, but…no. That would never do. She had to work through this on her own. She wasn't a little girl anymore. She wasn't blind. She wasn't helpless.

Her exhausted mind begged to differ, though.

Her muscles ached, her appetite was off and she was _constantly_ sleepy, but that wasn't even the worst of it. She couldn't focus. Or at least, she couldn't focus consistently. It seemed that when she sat down to write her thesis, the only sentences that jumped out at her were the ones that reminded her of the nightmare.

_The aboriginal people believe that every person exists eternally in the Dreamtime. This eternal part exists before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends. _

She remembered the white-haired woman. The tall woman with Bakura's eyes.

She remembered what that woman had called her.

"Amane…"

Had that been Bakura's little sister's name? Shizuka didn't think she _knew_ Bakura's little sister's name. Did that mean the nightmare was real?

No. No, of course not. Everything she knew about Bakura was second-hand knowledge anyway. Katsuya or one of his friends could have mentioned it once, and she could have remembered it subconsciously. It might not even be the correct name. Anyway, she needed to stop thinking about the dead little sisters and start thinking about her thesis. She was already almost a quarter of the way through her time here, and she still hadn't written a sentence.

Back to work…

_The Dreamtime is more real than reality itself. _

Shizuka shoved the book off the desk.

==o==

That night, Shizuka couldn't sleep. Again.

Bakura's bed, which had started out reasonably comfortable, now felt like it had been filled with rocks. Shizuka tossed and turned all night, full of a sort of restless energy she didn't know what to do with. It was at least four in the morning, and she was starting to get that numb feeling behind her eyes and the accompanying giddiness of sleep deprivation.

It was too hot.

It was too quiet.

And just below the level of conscious awareness, she swore she could hear someone whispering.

She tried to distract herself. She tried to count sheep, but she kept losing count. She tried to read, but the words seemed to jump around on the page. She couldn't even think clearly. It was almost as if her mind was moving too fast for her thoughts to keep up, taking her somewhere unknown, somewhere she wasn't sure if she wanted to go.

She stared up at the lightbulb on the ceiling and imagined, could almost see, it sucking all the color from the room, staining it a sepia tone, like an old photograph.

She felt like she was on drugs.

And as she lay there on the uncomfortable bed, sweat plastering her nightgown to her back, the whispering in her head grew louder. It consolidated. It commanded.

_Stand_.

She stood. And slowly, like the very beginning of a carousel ride, the room began to spin around her.

_Walk._

She staggered towards Bakura's bedroom door, not quite able to make her feet take her in a straight line in the spinning room. She knew, somehow, through the fog that had descended over her mind, that she had to get to the door. She had to get out of Bakura's bedroom.

The bookshelf whizzed past her.

Dizziness started to overcome her, and she knew if she fell down, she wouldn't be able to get up again.

The walls continued to spin, faster and faster; shapes became indistinguishable in the blur of color.

She had to get out of here.

_Close your eyes. _

No! That was the last thing she was going to do! Blinding herself to what she feared wouldn't make that fear go away. She'd just be helpless, unable to see it, unable to defend herself against it.

The room was a vortex.

_Trust me._

"I can't! I c-can't do it! What do you want from m—"

_Do as I say!_

The whisper in her ears was now a scream; the whir of the spinning room was now a roar. She could no longer distinguish floor from wall from ceiling, all merged together in a spinning, stupefying blur.

Shizuka bit her lip and obeyed the voice. Overcome with a sudden feeling of weakness, she closed her eyes.

And like the flip of a switch, all was suddenly silent.

She was conscious only of the sound of her own steady footfalls on the hardwood floor of Bakura's bedroom as she made the final few strides to the door, eyes still clamped tightly shut.

She opened the door to Bakura's bedroom and stepped into the hall, keeping her eyes shut.

The voice in her head spoke again, gentler this time.

_Come to me. _

"Where are y—"

_You know where I am._

And Shizuka did. She didn't even bother to protest that her eyes were closed and she couldn't see where she was going. She could feel it from her chest to her kneecaps, like a magnet in the pit of her stomach, every inch of her body pulling her toward a single spot.

The third bedroom.

Eyes still closed, her mind still too foggy to protest, she walked to the other end of the hallway. She reached out her hand and felt the cold metal of the doorknob.

Before she could move, it turned beneath her hand. She heard a creak as the door swung open.

_Come inside._

Shizuka stepped into the third bedroom. She heard the door close behind her.

_You may open your eyes now. _

Shizuka did, and what she saw was every bit as strange as the spinning room she'd left behind.

It was, as Bakura had said, a bedroom, insofar as there was a bed in the middle of the room, but nothing else looked like any other bedroom Shizuka had seen before.

The bed was split in two. On the left half, there was a pale pink comforter and a soft, white pillow. But the comforter seemed to _stop_ in the middle of the bed, not cut, but just…_ended. _And on the right half of the bed, there was no comforter at all, no pillow, not even a sheet. There was only a bare mattress covered in a fine layer of dust.

The rest of the room followed the same pattern of asymmetry. The left half of the room had clothes and books strewn across the floor. And on the right half, there was nothing but empty hardwood. On the left, pale wallpaper adorned the walls; on the right, the walls were stripped clean.

The entire room had a sort of dusky-rose color of unreality.

_Welcome,_ said the voice. It seemed to be coming from the walls themselves.

The fog over Shizuka's mind lifted. Finally able to think clearly again, she reached a number of conclusions simultaneously:

First: The present situation might also be a nightmare but, lacking any conclusive evidence one way or the other, she should behave as if it were really happening.

Second: Because coincidences were unlikely in a case such as this, she should assume that whoever was responsible for turning Bakura's bedroom into a carousel ride from hell was also responsible for the original 'nightmare.' The nightmare in which she'd been unable to move by her own will and had seen the world through someone else's eyes.

Third: The person (or thing…) behind these events was extraordinarily powerful.

And finally: She, Kawai Shizuka, was absolutely terrified.

She had to get out of here.

Shizuka ran back to the door of the strange bedroom and wrenched it open with all her strength. Behind her she heard a furious '_No!' _emanating from the walls, but she didn't look back. She raced down the staircase to the first floor of the house, and, as fast as she could, ran across the living room floor to the front door. She yanked it open.

And was met with…nothing.

Blackness.

Where there should have been Bakura's front yard and driveway, there was only black, the black of space, extending out, featureless, in all directions. She wobbled on the threshold, on the edge of a dark chasm. A wind originating from nowhere pushed her, invited her to fall into the darkness. The nothingness.

Shizuka pulled herself back and slammed the front door shut, too shocked to scream.

And behind her, she heard a strange noise, something that sounded half like sobbing and half like laughter.

The laughter became a voice, a girl's voice, but with a vicious edge that cut like a knife. It hissed at her from somewhere deep within the walls. _There will be no leaving. _

Slowly, shakily, Shizuka turned around.

And the sobbing laughter spread from its place in the wall, increasing in volume, filling the room all around her.

Shizuka sank down to the floor, back against the door, eyes wide and hands shaking.

_But how rude of me_, said the voice. _I haven't introduced myself. _

Shizuka blinked, and suddenly, she was no longer sitting against the door. Instead, she was sitting a few feet away, at a table in the middle of the living room. A table which hadn't been there moments before.

And she was paralyzed again. Shizuka realized with horror that the voice had sent her into another 'nightmare.'

Immediately, the change in sensory information confounded her senses. She noticed that her line of vision, far more acute than it had been a second before, was also much lower than it normally would have been, as if she were suddenly much shorter. She could feel something smooth beneath her hands: the pages of a book. And, now that she paid enough attention to hear, she realized that someone was talking to her. Sitting next to her. Beyond her conscious control, she turned to look at the person.

A boy. White hair, brown eyes, about thirteen years old. He was talking and talking at great length, but she was so distracted by the information overload from her other senses that she only caught the odd word.

"Roll…damage….initiative…And that's how you play Monster World, Amane."

Shizuka…no, _Amane_, blinked again, and the scene was gone.

She was back in her own body, back in the present, crouching against the front door once again.

"Amane…" Shizuka whispered hoarsely to the room at large. Her hands were shaking.

_Indeed_, said Amane, and Shizuka didn't miss the condescending note that colored her voice. _And you are?_

"Shi-Shizuka," Shizuka said, unable to keep the tremor of fear out of her own voice. It was odd addressing a presence she couldn't see, a presence that seemed to be surrounding her from all sides.

_Shizuka. What a lovely name. It suits you. Quiet. Calm. Serenity. No wonder you didn't scream. _

Amane laughed again, in that strange sobbing laugh of hers.

Shizuka was overcome with a profound need to state the obvious.

"You're dead."

_Indeed I am_. _Almost thirteen years now. Crushed under a truck, in case you were wondering. I think the official cause of death was 'partial decapitation'. _

Shizuka filed that under 'Deeply Disturbing.'

Amane went on, her tone oddly conversational. _I am a part of the house now, as you can see. I am in the walls and the windows and the memories. I am the memories. _

Shizuka steadied herself. It seemed that the disembodied voice that was Amane wanted to have a conversation with her. She could deal with that. It was certainly better than wanting to paralyze her.

Shizuka took a deep breath and began to speak. "So…the… things you show me. The ones where I can't move and I see through someone else's eyes…" She coughed and continued, fighting as hard as she could to keep her voice from shaking. "I'm seeing through your eyes? Those are your memories?"

All around Shizuka, the walls echoed with the strange sob-laughter.

_Those are two different questions, Shizuka_, said Amane, putting a mocking stress on Shizuka's name. _You are seeing through my eyes, yes. But no, you're not in my memories. They're not memories at all. They're echoes. _

_It's an old house, Shizuka. An old house that' s seen so much life. My brother and I were both born in this house. We ran and played and the windows shook with our laughter. _

The windows _still_ shook with her laughter, Shizuka reflected, but she didn't say anything.

Amane went on, a strange thickness suddenly coloring her disembodied voice, as if she were trying not to cry. _And now it's empty. Silent. For thirteen years. Or so it seemed. _

_But,_ she said, and here her voice became more hopeful, more defiant, _but you can't just stamp out life like that. It lingers, untended, in the corners. Waiting._

Her voice was suddenly very close to Shizuka, as if she were speaking directly into her face.

_I waited._

Shizuka shuddered.

_But there is life beyond me in this house, _Amane continued, her voice spreading throughout the walls once more. _I've felt it vibrating all these years, shaking, waiting. And when you came, the echoes started. _

That word again. Shizuka forced herself to speak. "Echoes?"

_Yes. Echoes. Not memories. What you're experiencing are fragments and bursts of time gone past. You're slipping back to a time when I was alive. You're reliving moments in the last month of my life. _

The voice was very close again, very harsh again, hissing in Shizuka's face.

_And you will help me. You will learn to control the echoes, how to start and stop them, and most importantly, how to change them. You will learn to move my body, control it of your own free will, and in so doing, you will change the past. And you WILL NOT LET ME GET INTO THAT CAR. _

Shizuka's fear mingled with anger and confusion. The voice was claiming that the echoes were a kind of time travel, and that she, Shizuka, could change the past so that Amane didn't … wouldn't … hadn't died.

And the voice wasn't just _asking _her; it was _commanding _her, frightening her, making her shake and whimper like a weakling. And she wasn't weak. She was exhausted, confused and terrified, but she wasn't weak. She would prove it.

She started to stand up defiantly, and stared down at where she thought the voice might be. "I'm not sure if I want—"

Shizuka was back against the wall before she knew what had hit her. The voice screamed.

_YOU WANT? __YOU__ WANT? Do you not have time in your busy schedule of feeding the cat and staring blankly at a computer screen? What about what __I__ want? I want to go to middle school! I want my mother to teach me to put on makeup! I want my brother to come to my high school graduation! I want to run and walk and sleep and eat and play and LIVE! I WANT TO LIVE!_

There was silence. And then Amane spoke, voice cracking just slightly.

_Please, Shizuka. Please help me to live. _

Shizuka looked around and thought about the echoes off the walls and the silence and the emptiness. She thought about weakness, her own and Amane's. She thought about car accidents and graduations. She thought about a voice without a body, a voice that couldn't laugh without sobbing. A voice that had to command to be heard at all.

And wordlessly, Shizuka nodded.

==o==


	4. Accept

**Chapter 4: Accept**

==o==

**Notes: **

**SPOILER (**_**so you don't get squicked and run away**_**)**_**: **__Yes, Amane looks like an eight-year-old in this chapter. Yes, this story will eventually be romance. But Amane will definitely NOT look like an eight-year-old in later chapters. And ESPECIALLY not when the romance rolls around. Also, mentally, Amane is the same age as Shizuka. Hopefully that saves some of you from squick. On with the show._

==o==

The house was silent.

Amane didn't speak again once she'd set her demands, nor did Shizuka make a single move away from her spot at the door. Frozen in place, she stared down at nothing in particular, contemplating what she'd just agreed to do.

The 'nightmare' was real. But it wasn't a nightmare at all, it was a sort of … crisscross in time, she supposed, a moment of the past floating up into the present and then sinking back again, like a drowning man struggling to surface.

Shizuka couldn't help but feel like she was drowning a bit herself.

The overwhelming magnitude of what Amane had asked of her was just starting to sink in. Shizuka would have to manipulate the time-slips, to learn to move as she inhabited—no, _possessed_—Amane's body. She would have to _change the past._

She wasn't sure if she could do it.

No, that wasn't right—she _doubted _that she could do it.

She shook herself mentally. She could just imagine what her brother would say about that kind of defeatist thinking. But then, her brother wouldn't just stand there, uselessly doubting himself. Her brother would _know_ that he could save the ghost; he'd jump headlong into the time-slips with neither a plan nor a single moment of worry. And he'd save Amane, because that's what he did. He'd save Amane because he was Jounouchi Katsuya, and he was too brave and too proud and too _pigheaded_ to fail.

But she wasn't Jounouchi Katsuya, Shizuka thought to herself. And she wasn't brave or proud. She was Kawai Shizuka, and right now, she was overwhelmed and terrified.

_Helpless as usual_, she thought ruefully, and remained frozen against the wall.

The silence and the doubt stretched on and on. Shizuka didn't realize how much time had passed until she noticed the first light of dawn filtering through the living room windows. All the while, she felt Amane's presence shifting impatiently through the walls. Absently, Shizuka wondered why she knew that.

_Come up to my room._

Amane spoke so suddenly that Shizuka almost mistook it for one of her own thoughts. But no, her thoughts didn't have that harsh undercurrent, those bitter overtones.

Not most of the time, anyway.

_It will be easier to talk up there,_ Amane continued. _And we have business to attend to._

Shizuka pushed herself away from the wall at last. Her legs were stiff from sitting too long, and they shook beneath her like a fawn's as she took her first steps. She walked slowly and stiffly to the staircase.

_Kh, hurry up, _muttered the voice in the wall.

Shizuka glared at nothing in particular, and proceeded up the stairs with greater ease. Before she cleared the top step, she began to feel a familiar tugging in her chest and kneecaps, the same feeling she'd had the previous night, pulling her across the floor, toward the third bedroom.

The door swung open without her ever touching it.

Even having seen it the previous night, Shizuka still gaped at the sight of Amane's bedroom: the way that one side of the floor was barren, the other full of discarded toys; the way that the pillows, bed sheets and covers only existed on half the bed, the other half stripped to the plastic mattress; the way that Shizuka could draw a line through the middle of the room, dividing the 'then' from the 'now.'

But that wasn't even the most unnerving thing about the room, Shizuka realized suddenly. It wasn't terrifying in how the two halves differed—it was terrifying in how the two halves were _alike_.

Both sides were utterly dead.

The 'now' side was as sterile as an operating room, stripped of all color, all sign that anyone had ever called it home. But the 'then' side was just as unsettling. It was simply … frozen. Toys forever lying where they'd last been dropped—dropped by a hand now long dead. Unmoved for thirteen years. A moment preserved in time. It was like Pompeii, Shizuka reflected, except the person who had lived here hadn't been lost to history; she was still loved, still missed, still mourned.

It was … disturbing.

Shizuka heard a rustle from behind her, and turned to see the cat, Tama, walk through the open door. Tama strode lazily across the floor and jumped up onto the bed, curling up on its center, where the comforters ended, exactly on the dividing line between 'then' and 'now.' She purred softly and rubbed her face against something that Shizuka couldn't see. The cat's fur began to move ever-so-slightly, in waves, as if she was being petted by an invisible hand.

Shizuka steeled herself for this very real possibility.

She didn't even jump when the hand appeared.

It started with the fingertips and spread outward, like a vessel gradually filling with water. The color gradually spread from fingernail to palm as the hand continued to stroke the cat. It spread further, from hand to arm, from arm to torso, and finally from torso to legs and head.

And there she sat, cross-legged on the divide between past and present, still petting that cat.

Amane.

She smiled up at Shizuka. "It's good to finally meet you in person," she said. The smile didn't quite reach her newly-formed eyes.

Shizuka just gaped for a moment, trying to recover from the shock of seeing a person form as if poured out of a Kool-Aid pitcher, attempting to get her thoughts in order. She looked down at Amane.

Well, this form was certainly less _intimidating_ than the disembodied voice in the wall.

Amane was _tiny_, Shizuka noticed. Her face suggested that she was about eight years old, but she was short and skinny for her age, maybe even a little scrawny. She had her brother's white hair, but her eyes were blue.

And she was semi-translucent.

Amane raised a slightly see-through hand and snapped her fingers.

"Pay attention," she said, and her tone was clipped and businesslike, no longer as raw as it had been downstairs. She sounded almost … restrained, as if she was trying to compensate for the way her emotions had run away with her earlier.

Shizuka met Amane's eyes. There was something distinctly unnerving about simultaneously staring into someone's eyes and staring _through _them, but Shizuka managed to hold her gaze.

"I called you up here to discuss the finer details of our arrangement," said Amane.

At this point, the cat, who had not been terribly impressed by Amane's apparition in the first place, yawned as if bored by the conversation, jumped off the bed, and trotted out of the room.

Amane dropped the hand that had been petting it back to the comforter and began drumming her fingers impatiently. She went on. "As you can see, in this room I can manifest in a passably physical body. And as much as I love being the big, scary voice in the wall, reducing you to a terrified sort of catatonia really isn't conducive to a successful partnership."

Shizuka bit her lip. 'Terrified' was right, she thought to herself, ashamed. She'd just _frozen_, uselessly; Amane probably thought she was completely helpless, and … wait.

Shizuka paused in her self-defamation and considered Amane's words for a moment. As forceful as the other girl was, as uneasy as she was about Amane's spectral appearance, Shizuka couldn't help but find Amane's speech a bit … affected? With the down-to-business tone and the collegiate vocabulary, Amane's words seemed quite out of place coming from what appeared to be an eight-year-old mouth. It was almost as if she was _trying _to seem older. Trying to impress her.

But Amane was still talking. "This room will be the base for our operations," she said, tilting her head to the side, gauging Shizuka's reaction. "We will meet here; we will speak here" —she patted the bed next to her— "and you will sleep here." She smiled that same smile, the one that stretched her mouth but left her eyes cold. "From here, I'll teach you to start and stop the echoes, to gain control when you possess the echo of my body. You will leave this room only to start the echoes, to use the bathroom, and to eat. I believe there's enough food in the pantry to last you the rest of the month if you ration yourself appropriately, so I don't anticipate any complaints in that department. In fact," she said, and here there was a bit of a glint in her eye, a bit of that same forceful anger she'd used downstairs, "I don't anticipate any complaints at all. You will do as I say. Any questions?"

Shizuka paused a moment, processing Amane's demands and her own reactions to them. It was a lot to take in. "Just…" she said, and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, flexing her hand at the wrist as if to ask a question, but dropping it quickly. She didn't know where to start. Amane was … confusing. Downstairs, she'd been threatening and imposing. Here, she was still … forceful, still _unnerving_ in her transparent, childish form, in the incongruity of her speech with her appearance. It was just … something was … strange.

Amane sighed impatiently, waiting for Shizuka to continue, and rested her semi-translucent chin in her hand. She looked … petulant.

Amane was _trying too hard_, Shizuka realized suddenly. All the bossiness, all the commands—they only served to show Shizuka how badly Amane _needed_ her, how desperate she was. Perhaps Shizuka wasn't the only terrified party in this situation.

Perhaps Shizuka wasn't the only one who felt helpless.

With this newfound understanding, Shizuka finally worked up the courage to speak. "I need to know…" she began, and her voice was softer, less strained than it had been. "I—I will help you. I will do as you say. But…" She trailed off again; she wasn't used to making demands of people. A flurry of questions jumped to her mind, but foremost of them was, _Why me? Why did you choose someone you so obviously see as weak? Am I really the best you can do?_

"Please, I—I need to know … why." Shizuka winced inwardly at the tremor still present in her voice, but pressed on. "Why did you choose me? A-and why you didn't ask your brother, or Otogi-san, or even _my_ brother?"

There was a pause, and for the first time since the conversation began, Amane broke eye contact with Shizuka. She looked down at the bed.

"You weren't my first choice," Amane said lowly. Grabbing a handful of duvet, she drew her hand into a fist. "You weren't my… I didn't _have_ a choice."

Amane sighed and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling as she spoke. There was a long silence before she spoke again. When she did, her voice was quiet.

"How old are you, Shizuka?" she asked.

"Twenty-two." Shizuka wondered why that was relevant to her purpose in the house.

Amane let out a dry one-note laugh that seemed to catch in her throat a little. "So am I," she said. All the business was gone from her voice, but it hadn't been replaced by her previous rage. She just sounded … hollow. Bitter. And then she was quiet again, as if thinking. "Except I'm not. I'm eight years old. Forever."

Shizuka looked at her questioningly.

"I don't know why you're here, Shizuka. I don't know why the echoes have decided to work through you. The echoes didn't start until you arrived, and believe me, I would have known if they'd started before then. I was … paying attention."

She sighed and sat back up again. "At first it was just in here, just my bedroom that flickered between past and present. The echoes spread later, of course; you were there for that, but at first..." She ran a hand down the comforter on the 'past' side of the bed, slowly, almost lovingly. "At first this was all I had." She looked down. "And then the flickering stopped and the room just … just … stuck. That's when I knew I had to reach out to whoever was in the house. That's when I knew my waiting had finally paid off."

Hm. Well that was promising, Shizuka thought. If the echoes had just happened to start while she was staying at the house, then there was no reason that Amane couldn't wait for more competent help to arrive. She wondered why Amane hadn't thought of that.

"Well…" Shizuka began tentatively, trying to meet Amane's eyes again, "why not just wait a little longer then? Your brother and Otogi-san will be back in three weeks and—"

"_No_,"said Amane, sitting up, looking alarmed. "It has to be_ now_." Her voice was suddenly filled with the barest hint of panic. She grew suddenly silent and pulled her legs toward her. For the first time since Shizuka had met her, she really did look as young as her body suggested.

Shizuka walked up to the defensive ball that was Amane and put a comforting hand on her knee. She was … oddly solid-feeling, Shizuka noticed … Warm? But her hand was quickly swatted away. Amane did uncurl a bit, though.

"You're really going to make me explain it all, aren't you," said Amane, sounding hollow again. She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. Shizuka nodded.

"Echoes … fade," Amane said quietly, haltingly. "This room … the first time it echoed … it … wasn't divided. It was all in the past." She looked around the room briefly, but then quickly cast her eyes down again, drawing her hand around the comforter as if to hold it with her. "And every day, the echo … recedes a bit."

She met Shizuka's eyes again. Behind one translucent eye, Shizuka could see a little girl's headboard. On the other side, she saw through to the blank wall. Both eyes were large and frightened.

"If the room fades…" said Amane, "…then I might fade too."

Shizuka didn't know what to say to that. A million questions came to mind: _Would you cease to exist, or would you move on, or would you remain in the wall, and what if I can't save you, and what if I fail and you fade, and does it matter, and would it be better, and why am I so scared and why are __you __so scared?_

She voiced none of them. Amane didn't look like she needed more questions. Still sitting curled up in a ball in the middle of the bed, she looked like she just needed a friend.

Shizuka sat down at the foot of the bed, her legs hanging over the side. Amane scooted to the side, seemingly to allow her more room, but she also moved forward, so that they two sat alongside each other.

They sat like that for a long time, close but not touching, both staring straight ahead at nothing. A few inches, and the divide between past and present, lay between them.

The house was silent again.

==o==

**A/N: **I'm sure most of you know what Pompeii is, but in case you don't : Pompeii was a Roman city that was completely buried in over 20 feet of ash after the eruption of a nearby volcano, Mount Vesuvius. The ash preserved the ruin, making casts of bodies where they fell, and encasing the artifacts where they were dropped. In some cases, entire rooms are preserved, full of dead people and their belongings.

Shizuka's such a history/anthropology nerd.


End file.
